Extending the 3D capabilities of the CASA viewer

The majority of present and future ESO facilities, as the VLT, ALMA, and the E-ELT, feature instruments which produce datacubes (i.e., 2 spatial, 1 wavelength/frequency dimension). In this context, the need for an ESO based visualization tool capable of handling datacubes was identified. Rather than starting a new application, it was decided to develop the 3D Visualization tool as part of the CASA software and extend the available capabilities of the CASA viewer. Handling data that is augmented with a pixel-to-pixel error and data quality information is an important requirement for the 3D tool, and we have defined a format to store such data in a single FITS file. We present the current status of the project and give an outlook to future developments.